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FRIDAY:

TED BROOKLYN:
We’re living in what is commonly referred to as the “Information Age.” With the emergence of social networks, we build new communities by pressing the “Like” and “+1″ buttons and becoming fans. As we become increasingly interconnected with the Brooklyn community in these new ways, we find ourselves grasping for a new common ethos. In other words, we are striving to refine and define “better.” On December 2 at Brooklyn Bowl, we will address these issues with talks from the best and brightest minds of Brooklyn and beyond.

OPERA ON TAP/Roulette Sisters.
Opera is fun. Most people don’t seem to realize how much fun it really is. In order to prove it, Opera on Tap has taken its act to barrooms where they found out that beer on tap enhances the operatic experience. The company is made up of young singers and instrumentalists who relish the direct contact with audiences not inhibited in their reactions by the looming menace of giant chandelier.The Roulette Sisters have been turning heads and stopping traffic since forming in the cold winter of 2003. Noticing that their warm velvet harmonies and spicy hot licks were melting the snow outside, the sisters realized that they had started something not only weather-altering but soul-stirring as well. The sexy sisters play a hip-shaking blend of American country blues, traditional songs, popular tunes and old timey music from the first half of the 20th century. With Mamie Minch: resonator guitar, Meg Reichardt: electric guitar, Megan Burleyson: washboard, Karen Waltuch: viola.

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TUESDAY:

PERFORMA 11 (ONGOING)Performa 11, the fourth edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, will be held in New York City from November 1–21, 2011. The three-week biennial will showcase new work by more than 100 of the most exciting artists working today, in an innovative program breaking down the boundaries between visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, graphic design, and the culinary arts. Presented in collaboration with a consortium of more than 50 arts institutions and over 50 curators, as well as a network of public spaces and private venues across the city, Performa 11 will ignite New York City with energy and ideas, acting as a vital “think tank” linking minds across the five boroughs and bringing audiences together for brilliant new performances in all disciplines.

Ben Gerstein (Jerome Foundation Commission) – FREEDOM CHOIR! A congregation for cathartic improvisational serviceOn November 1st, All Saints’ Day, The Day of the Dead — ancient holidays in honor of the saints, known or unknown; deceased friends and family — Ben Gerstein brings together for the first time a unique ensemble of enormous acoustic, experiential intensity to celebrate the powers of improvisation on this earth. FREEDOM CHOIR! A congregation for cathartic improvisational service. Inspired by the micro and macrocosms of nature, ecstatic spiritual and athletic experiences, dream, destiny, ritual, prayer, ancestry, and visions throughout Art and beyond… Dance floor, prairie, pow-wow, synagogue, church, mountain top, ocean, forest, desert, track and field, fighting ring, mosh pit … Ferocious love! A historic event for expansive sound and emotion; unnamable sound, unnamable emotion. We are the world! Communion between us all…

69°S. (Part of the 2011 Next Wave Festival)
“When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that divine providence guided us… it seemed to me often that we were not alone.” —Sir Ernest Henry ShackletonSixty-nine degrees south latitude, threshold of Antarctica, foreboding and cold. In an attempt to cross the continent, explorer Ernest Shackleton and crew have been shipwrecked, and now—through the work of Phantom Limb marionette maker and composer Erik Sanko and set designer Jessica Grindstaff (both at BAM with More Than Four, 2007 Next Wave)—they emerge before us in the snow.

CHAMBER MUSIC at INCUBATOR ARTS PROJECT
Robert Ashley’s music has long been recognized as some of the most radical, forward-thinking work produced today. The Incubator Arts Project’s MUSIC series, curated by Travis Just, focuses on his chamber and instrumental music, in addition to re-thinking one of his best-known vocal epics: Automatic Writing. A new generation of experimental composers and artists is looking to Ashley’s work for inspiration; this week will show why.(ONGOING)

PHARMAThe Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union examines the influence and impact of graphic design on the pharmaceutical industry in PHARMA, a new exhibit featuring original and rarely seen works by luminaries including Andy Warhol, Lester Beall, Will Burtin and Herb Lubalin. PHARMA’s exploration begins with the avant-garde promotionals of the 1940’s, when a market need emerged to promote “miracle” drugs, such as Penicillin, to the medical industry. In a compelling and thought-provoking way, PHARMA presents the relationship graphic design has had with the pharmaceutical industry ranging from the federal government’s increased regulations to new marketing tactics where the everyday consumer, not the doctor, is considered the target audience. While the exhibition provides examples of past and present, the public is encouraged to reflect and question how graphic design is used to market drugs and design has transformed these commodities into objects of desire.

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Thomas Bangstead‘s surreal and sublime portraits of oft vacant landscapes and still life’s, seem to embody the suspense of the “happened.”

Devoid of obvious action, Bangstead’s work instead lingers in the moment (perhaps even the second) after a tragedy, before a meal, or in the midst of a scenic view and leave the viewer to conjure their own narratives based on these strange vignettes.

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Director, producer, activist, musician and Academy award winning actor Tim Robbins was born in West Covina, California on October 16, 1958 and raised in New York City. He began acting in the early ’80s and went on to star in such films as Bull Durham, Jacob’s Ladder, The Player, The Shawshank Redemption, The Hudsucker Proxy and Mystic River. He won a Best Supporting actor for the latter, and was nominated for Best Director for 1995’s Dead Man Walking. In 2010, Robbins rleased his debut album, Tim Robbins & the Rogues Gallery Band, a nine-track collection of self-described “raggle taggle and rousing gypsy Americana,” produced by Hal Willner, which featured the talents of Kate St. John, Leo Abrahams, David Coulter, Roger Eno, Rory McFarlane, Andrew Newmark and Dudley Phillips.

The Center is pleased to continue its series of Art Study Tours. Class will be taught off-site, behind-the-scenes at various institutions, collections, and artists’ studios. This summer series will take advantage of the cultural resources in New York City and will focus on color and the uses and making of pigments. Consisting of 3 visits throughout the city this July and August, students may sign up for all three in the series or just for one class, each taking place on a Thursday afternoon.
LISTEN:

Illuminating Fashion at the Morgan Library and Museum. Visit this special exhibition and discover the uses of color in medieval manuscripts with an expert in the field, Karen Gorst. Drawn from the Morgan’s collections, over fifty illuminated medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books are featured in the exhibition. Join us and discover the difference between the depictions of contemporary fashions and the actual colors used in clothing of the time period. Students will discuss from a historical perspective the process of making paints and dyes. The exhibition will be used as a backdrop for a discussion on the different artistic techniques employed to produce the color in medieval manuscripts and on fabric from the medieval period.

More than 125 galleries and institutions participating in Chelsea Art Walk 2011 will be open for extended hours, artist talks, receptions, and other special events to showcase the vibrancy of the summer arts scene in Chelsea.

Margaret Thatcher Projects is pleased to announce the opening of w h i t e-h o t, an exhibition of works by 21 artists, co-curated by Erin Brown and Margaret Thatcher. The exhibition, which includes work in a wide range of media from artists both represented in the gallery’s stable and guest artists, explores the visual and ideological possibilities of the color white.

Opening Reception July 29th 6pm – 10pm
Gallery Open July 29th through July 31st

Painting: a process, a reflection, an expression.

With the series “Confluence,” Jess Hartely explores all-over abstraction. She begins her work by creating a series of thin layers from which the painting begins to emerge and take on its own form. Depth and color develop as the painting is built up with each layer. She uses masonite board because it resists the water and does not absorb it like canvas would. This extended period of fluidity allows her to explore risk and uncertainty. For Hartley, abstraction is all about the experiment. The work in this series is rooted in Hartley’s own imagination, but follows the rules of experimental process that she has developed.

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Series: Strange NYC History Lectures@ BB.
A Rite of Return
Wednesday, July 27, 7pm, $10/$8 BHS Members
Out of an anonymous 1870 pocket-size diary bestowed on historian Ben Feldman, a fantastic story emerged, and a 100-year old rent in the cloth of a family’s history was repaired. Feldman will share the tale of Henry Knight Dyer (1846-1911), Brooklyn born and bred, who rose from a modest Fort Greene home and his first job as an office boy in the Dennison Paper Products Co. to become president of that multi-national enterprise at the turn of the twentieth century. Dyer’s daily scribblings in a cheap paper volume, as a single 24-year old living in Brooklyn and working in lower Manhattan, inspired Feldman’s lengthy journey for the truth of this man’s life and his wife’s sorry end after less than a year’s widowhood.

PopRally invites you to Arcade, an interactive evening of games selected by Kill Screen and inspired by the exhibition Talk to Me. Guests can play games in a variety of spaces throughout the Museum and the Sculpture Garden, including Bit Trip Beat, Canabalt, Limbo, and a new motion-based Kinect project from Ryan Challinor and Matt Boch of Harmonix, creator of the hit music game Rock Band. Heathered Pearls (Ghostly International, ISO50) provides the soundtrack for the evening. more…

Join the editors of BOMB Magazine and the contributors to the summer issue for an evening of readings, performances, and chilling out by the water in DUMBO. There will be raffles, poster giveaways, and other surprises!

Have a drink with BOMB staff and enjoy the literary stylings of writers Nicholas Elliott, Sarah V. Schweig, and Simon Van Booy. With a special theatrical piece directed by playwright and director Richard Maxwell starring Obie Award–winning actor Scott Shepherd.

Nicholas Elliott was raised in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and lives in Woodside, Queens. His plays have been performed in Luxembourg, France, and Denmark. He is a correspondent for French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and the company manager for the theater company New York City Players. His poems appear in BOMB’s summer literary supplement, First Proof.

Richard Maxwell is a playwright and director living in New York. He is the artistic director of New York City Players. A volume of his plays from 1996–2000 has been published by Theatre Communications Group. His most recent play, Neutral Hero, premiered in May at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and recently toured Europe. Maxwell interviewed actor Scott Shepherd for BOMB’s summer issue.

Sarah V. Schweig‘s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Columbia University, where her manuscript was recipient of the David Craig Austin Memorial Award. Her chapbook, S, is available through Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her poems appear in BOMB’s summer literary supplement, First Proof.

Scott Shepherd is a New-York based actor. Most recently, Shepherd took on the roles of two characters in The Wooster Group’s production of Tenessee Williams’s Vieux Carré. His performance as Nick Carraway in Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed Gatz, for which he delivered most of the narration in the nearly seven-hour production, earned him a 2011 Obie Award. Shepherd was interviewed by playwright and director Richard Maxwell in BOMB’s summer issue.

Simon Van Booy is a New York-based novelist and short-story writer born in London and raised in rural Wales. He has published two collections of stories: The Secret Lives of People in Love (2007), and Love Begins in Winter (2009), which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He has also edited three books of philosophy: Why We Fight, Why We Need Love, and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter. His novel Everything Beautiful Began After is just out from Harper Perennial. His conversation with author Siri Hustvedt appears in BOMB’s summer issue.

Founded in 1981, BOMB Magazine is celebrating 30 years of delivering the artist’s voice. Check out The BOMB Digital Archive at BOMBsite.com and don’t miss daily features about art, music, fiction, poetry, film, and dance on BOMBlog.

The Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey is one of the finest collections of automata–or moving mechanical toys popular in the 18th Century and 19th Centuries–in the world. Compiled over 50 years by heir to the Guinness beer fortune Murtogh D. Guinness (1913-2002), the collection features scores of immaculately preserved historic automata–many of them produced in 19th Century France–with subjects ranging from snake charmers to magicians, singing birds to anthropomorphic monkeys, Cleopatra in her death throes to a waltz-playing Mephistopheles; it also includes a number of mechanical musical instruments and a variety of programmed media ranging from player piano rolls to pinned cylinders.